6 
of the assessment because they provide greater protection for the 
public and the environment than the Asilomar Guidelines or no guidelines. 
A Draft Environmental Impact Statement was filed and published in 
the Federal Register on September 9, 1976, to afford additional public 
review and comment. The draft statement has been analyzed 
and comments received are addressed in the- final Environmental 
Impact Statement to be published soon. 
D . Department Patent Policy 
In June, shortly before the release of the Guidelines, Stanford 
University and the University of California asked NIH to review DHEW 
policies relating to the patenting of inventions perfected through the 
use of recombinant DNA techniques and financed by NIH. Under current 
DHEW patent regulations, invention rights to discoveries developed under 
the Department's research support are normally allocated in either of 
two ways: 
• The Department may enter into an Institutional Patent Agreement 
(IPA) with a university or other nonprofit institution that has 
adequate mechanisms for administering patents on inventions. 
The IPA provides the institution the first option to own all 
inventions made in performance of Department grants or contracts, 
subject to a number of conditions deemed necessary to protect the 
public interest. 
• For those institutions that have not entered into a patent agreement 
with the Department, determination of ownership is deferred until 
an invention has been made, at which time an institution may petition 
the Department for ownership of the invention. 
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